Good or bad, in your content area or out, at your grade level or not, observing other teachers is the single best way I invigorate my teaching practice.  After a particularly disastrous transition from rural Mississippi to Oakland, California, I dedicated my prep period once a week to observing strong teachers around the city. Someone, somewhere, was teaching my students successfully, and I was determined to find them and learn what worked.  These observations helped fine-tune my practice by showing me ways to use time effectively, give regular student feedback, and improve my classroom management.  Sometimes my only take-away was “Well, I’m definitely not going to…”

Read a book.

Not an education book, though.  A book about leadership or psychology or time management.  Teachers are leaders and we should investigate [at least some of the] literature available about motivation.  From Carol Dweck’s Mindset and Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers to Stephen R. Covey’s The 8^th Habit and Robert K. Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel when trying to motivate ourselves and our students to achieve excellence.

Take a class in the subject you teach.

I recently took two math classes at the community college and both strengthened my teaching practice. Both teachers were strong instructors, in different ways.  One made excellent real-world connections with the course content, the other provided relentlessly clear instruction.  One used online discussions effectively (in a math class!) and the other had efficient strategies for checking student understanding in class.  Additionally, I could see where my students were headed in a few years, and I could better prepare them because I had just been in their [future] shoes.  I notice my students lean in and listen a bit more carefully when I mention the kinds of mistakes my community college professor wouldn’t tolerate.

Attend a conference.

With one notable exception, every educational conference I’ve attended has improved specific elements of my practice.  Whether I’m learning how to write a better rap about SOHCAHTOA (thanks, KIPP School Summit ’09) or how to use elements of graphic design to make my class materials more appealing and effective.  Planning is essential in maximizing a conference opportunity.  First, think about one or three things you’d like to change or improve.  Then, find a few workshops that address these concerns. Your brain can only absorb so much information at a time, so prioritization is essential.  Finally, be open to serendipity.  I stumbled into the graphic design presentation at Asilomar a few years ago because it sounded interesting and different, and I still reflect on that 60 minute presentation every time I create a handout.

A note of caution.

Don’t take an education class to improve your teaching practice.  After a few years in the classroom, a teacher has learned what those classes have to teach.  Education classes are about getting pre-service teachers ready for the classroom, not honing the skills of an experienced one.  As a classroom teacher, the best way to discover what works is to find ideas, test them out in your classroom, modify them, and try again.  A professional learning community (PLC) at a school site is a profound way to improve in concert with other educators, but education classes far fall short of this ideal.